


It's not a date

by Lobelia321



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Billy's Café., Kissing., M/M, Petit-fours., Restaurant., Roses.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a date; it's surveillance.  So why is there kissing?</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's not a date

**Title:** It's not a date  
 **Author:** Lobelia; lj user="lobelia321"

 **Fandom:** BBC Sherlock ****  
Pairing: John Watson / Sherlock Holmes  
 **Rating:** PG-12. Mature. Teen-explicit. 12A.  
 **Length:** c. 2,500 words.  
 **Tags:** Kissing. Billy's Café. Restaurant: 'that scene' from _Study in Pink_. Petit-fours. Roses.  
 **Warnings:** None.  
 **Feedback:** Is loved very much. One line, one word even! :-)  
 **Summary:** It's not a date; it's surveillance. So why is there kissing?

**It's not a date  
by Lobelia**

**  
**

They're in the window seats at Billy's Café. It's not a date; it's surveillance.

"What exactly are we looking out for tonight?" asks John.

"22 Northumberland Street. Keep your eyes on it."

"Yes, obviously 22 Northumberland Street. It's always 22 Northumberland Street when we're at Billy's Café. But who? What?"

"Dinner?" asks Angelo the waiter. A white napkin hangs draped over his brawny arm. "Drinks? Candles?" He whips out a candelabrum from behind his back, plonks it on the table and smoothly lights its two tapering candles with a Hello-Kitty-lighter. "Flowers?" And before John can so much as say 'I'm not his date', Angelo has produced, with a flourish and a bow, a slim vase containing two red roses. "Wine, yes? Pinot grigio? On the house!"

Angelo is gone. Two wine glasses collect condensation and sparkle with reflections from the shimmering flames and the drooping petals.

"Well?" says Sherlock. He raises the glass and studies the wine's legs. He peers through the rounded side at John.

"Well what?" John takes a sip. The pinot is cold and sharp. Sherlock's face behind the glass is blurrily convex.

"Aren't you going to say it?"

"What?" Although John knows perfectly well 'what'. "Say what?"

"What you always say. What you've said every single time the past five times we've come here." Sherlock lowers the glass.

"Five times? Has it really been that often?"

"Don't try and change the subject." Sherlock's eyes flicker in the candlelight.

"Why bother?" says John. He gestures at the table. There is barely any space for dishes. "He'll just bring something else. I don't know: some pillows? A frosted cake with sparklers on top?"

As if on cue, a Romanian violinist materialises and plays the tune from _Titanic_.

"Thank you," says John. "Yes. _Thank_ you. Have you got some change, Sherlock, to make this fellow go away? No. Of course you haven't. Here." He scrabbles around for coins in his pocket. "Goodbye. Thank you."

Then he downs the entire glass of white wine.

Angelo appears. "You like that? Eh? It's lovely, isn't it? And this, too, all on the house. Nothing too good." A plate is manoeuvred into a spot between candle and bottle; the lid is whisked off; two heart-shaped petit-fours unfurl almond butterfly wings.

"Um," says John. "Yes. Thank you." He purses his lips, looks up at Angelo, nods, sucks in his mouth.

"Anything for you," flutes Angelo and slides away.

"You don't _really_ mind, do you?" says Sherlock.

"What? Oh, it's you. No, no. After all..." John looks up at the ceiling and pulls up his eyebrows. "How long is it that I've been on an actual date? Let me see." He strokes his mouth, thumb to the left, forefinger to the right. "This is the closest I've come in a long while. So." He reaches for the bottle. "Cheers."

"If you're not going to say it." Sherlock clinks his own glass against the rim of John's. "Then I'll have to."

John picks up one of the petit-fours.

"I'm not your date," says Sherlock.

John nods. "No. You're not." He pops the petit-four into his mouth. It sprays icing sugar. "You're not..." He gets the sounds out around the praline. "...not my date."

"What?" Sherlock leans forward, a smirk playing just at the left-hand corner of his lips. "I couldn't quite hear, what with talking with your mouth full. But did you actually say it?"

"Not my date," repeats John, swallows the last bit of almond, licks his lips, drains his second glass of wine. When the waiter appears again, he feels almost jolly. "Angelo," he cries. "What do you bring us this time?"

"The menu. Only the menu."

"What, no balloons? Sugary valentines? No... fortune cookies with suggestive messages inside?"

Angelo looks worried. As far as John can tell through the haze that seems to have fallen across his vision.

"Don't worry about him," says Sherlock. "Please. We'll be fine. Come back a bit later."

An ambulance swirls past outside. John jerks his head around. He'd almost forgotten about 22 Northumberland Street.

"You were saying?" That was Sherlock. Sherlock is talking.

"Yes?" says John. He goes for the bottle. This is a good little drop, this is. "No," says John. He pours. He looks up. A green pair of eyes is watching him. It's funny how he's grown used to that pair of eyes watching him. Watching his every move. Surveillance.

"I didn't say _it_ ," says John. "I said, _you_. You are not my date."

"What are you then?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just some doctor. Why aren't you eating your petit-four?"

"Do you want it?"

John leans forward and nearly burns his nose on the candle. "Shit," he mumbles and douses his pain in wine.

Sherlock has his elbows on the table and his fingers interlaced and his chin on his knuckles. John can't see Sherlock's mouth, and he frowns; he needs to be able to see Sherlock's mouth, or he won't be able to make out what Sherlock is saying to him.

Sherlock seems to be saying, 'You can be my date, if you want to be.' Except that can't be right. That's a truly bizarre thing to be saying.

"Excuse me?" says John. He moves his neck about, skin chafing against cotton, cotton rustling against cable knit.

Sherlock's eyes refract twin candle flames. "Only if you want."

"Want what? Sorry?"

"Date. Be it. Go away, Angelo. Come back later."

"Why would I... What."

Sherlock lifts one finger from the interlaced bunch. "Shame to waste all this."

John sucks in his lips and bends his head to the right. He studies the tablecloth. Which is off-white, with a checkerboard pattern stitched into it. Probably full of traces and clues of something. Sherlock would know. The flowers, too. Finely-veined and no doubt full of meaning.

Abruptly, his head jerks up and his eyes meet Sherlock's watchful gaze.

"So how. How is this a date?" Why is he even going along with this? This game that Sherlock is playing with him?

Because. That's why. Because he always goes along with every game that Sherlock up and decides to play.

"Well," replies Sherlock. "That's where I need your help. This is not really my area."

"As you keep saying."

"So I need you to tell me." Sherlock's eyebrows are quizzical wings across his forehead. "What to do."

John downs his third glass. The bottle is now empty. The flames gutter. "What to do," he repeats. "What to do."

"I'm guessing," says Sherlock, "that we eat and talk and flirt and hold hands. Or something like that?"

"Flirt?" blurts out John. " _Flirt?_ "

"Play footsies." Sherlock shrugs. "Feed each other tidbits. Kiss."

Kiss.

John says, "Kiss." It's a statement.

"Yes, isn't that what..."

"Yes, that's what..."

"So that's what we..."

"Yes, yes, where's more wine? What about 22 Whatsit Street?"

"Won't run away," says Sherlock. His eyes don't even flicker in the direction of the window. They appear glued to John's face.

John feels a heat in his ears. He puts his palms down on the table in front of him. He stares at Sherlock.

He stares at Sherlock's face. Into Sherlock's eyes.

Sherlock's eyes are intent and not really green. They're aqua. Or jade. Or a colour not known to human palettes. The irises are round and outlined in a darker hue. The pupils are black and they flex; they expand and contract in the wavering candlelight.

"Um," says John.

A delicate tinge appears on Sherlock's cheeks. Sherlock has pale skin, alabaster skin, and now it's tinted, as if dipped in rose water.

John shakes his head.

His head doesn't clear.

Sherlock compresses his lips.

His lips, John thinks, are really remarkably wide. The top lip swings upward in twin steeples. It hangs from his nose like a valley.

"Have you really never..." he finds his voice saying. His hand grips the tablecloth.

"Well," says Sherlock.

"Well?"

"Well, it depends on how you define..."

"I define it as...."

"If you mean...."

"I mean nothing," John says quickly. "Nothing. Sorry. Forget I ever spoke. Forget I..." There are too many things between him and Sherlock: candles and roses and glasses and air. He shuffles his chair around the side of the table; it scrapes along the tiles. He reaches Sherlock's knees. Sherlock withdraws his knees, like a snail its horns. John reaches Sherlock's elbows. Sherlock hauls in his elbows, like a sailor an anchor. John reaches Sherlock's shoulder. It flinches warm against his own shoulder, beneath jacket and shirt and cable-knit jumper.

"Like this?" says John, and his 's' slurs only the tiniest bit. He puts his right hand on Sherlock's thigh. "And like this?" He presses his own thigh against Sherlock's leg.

Sherlock pulls himself up and sits rod-straight.

John thinks about where to put his other hand. He tries several positions but they all involve having to cross arms and end up in an awkward twist. His head falls against Sherlock's shoulder.

"This seems more like a drunk encounter," says Sherlock whose voice sounds deep and cracked, "than a so-called date."

John's head snaps back up but before he can say 'It's not a date, not really; it's a drunken encounter', Sherlock's mouth is on his face.

Not on his mouth. Sherlock's missed John's mouth, whether by accident or design, John doesn't know. Sherlock's mouth has landed on the side of John's face, the corner of his lips against the corner of John's lips.

John holds perfectly still.

Sherlock's mouth moves away as if shocked by its own daring but it moves only by a fraction of an inch.

Sherlock's breath is hot against John's skin.

John breathes in and out, without making a sound. Somehow it's important not to make a sound. He stares at the tablecloth and at his hand on Sherlock's thigh.

Sherlock's thigh twinges.

John grips harder.

Sherlock's breath goes in and out. John can feel its movement on his cheek. He closes his eyes.

Rain starts to patter against the pane.

John thinks, if I move just one inch to the right.

Just one.

He can't do it. His fingers are going numb on Sherlock's thigh.

Light-blue after-images dance behind John's closed lids. Flame-shaped blue shapes. Tongue-shaped.

He clears his throat.

Sherlock's mouth jumps away. Sherlock straightens up.

John moves with him, eyes closed, skin-blind, and finds Sherlock's mouth as if navigating by night.

His balance is off. He can feel it in his inner ear. Hammer and anvil: all over the place. But he lands, somehow, in the right place.

Sherlock's mouth is quite hard. Closed and hard and prim, closing out John. It's a stubborn mouth. John has to work at it, nip at its corners, purse his lips against it, lick along its steepled wings, nick its fleshy expanse with his teeth.

His hand is sweaty on Sherlock's thigh.

In a far-off world, the door of the café opens and closes, and patrons laugh and talk.

In a far-off world, this makes sense. In the closed world of John's mouth and of Sherlock's mouth, nothing makes sense at all.

There's no clue at all. John's mouth on Sherlock's mouth is clueless.

But then sense returns. John's grip gains purpose. 'You asked', he thinks, 'you asked for this', and suddenly his mind is crystal clear, snapped into clarity, scrubbed like a winter's sky. He sits up straighter himself; he takes his other hand and he knows exactly where to put it: on Sherlock's right shoulder, threading his arm past Sherlock's elbows and hands, putting his hand right there, the shoulder warm and shuddering under his palm. He forces his tongue against Sherlock's lips. He burrows and butts, and finally, Sherlock's lips relent and a small crack opens.

John's in.

Suddenly, everything is very familiar.

Within Sherlock's mouth, John finds Sherlock's tongue, just like he knew he would, waiting for him. Dragon in its lair. Warm and wet and wary. Of snail-like texture, curled in on itself but slippery and, ultimately, yielding.

'Yes,' thinks John.

Then he stops. Thinking.

And just goes on doing.

Kissing Sherlock requires all his attention and concentration. It's like a puzzle. And the solution? Does he even care? It's the solving itself that counts.

Sherlock sits straight and still. His hands are still clasped round one another; his face turned to the side, towards John but his body frontal and stiff. Only his thigh flexes, the muscle expands and contracts, and John's fingers expand and contract with it.

John opens his eyes, expecting to meet Sherlock's jade-aqua gaze but Sherlock, to John's surprise, has his eyes closed. His lashes lie black against his pale skin: fly's feet on paper.

John's heart twitches and beats.

Sherlock's tongue when it finally starts dancing is sharp and strong and methodical. It seeks out corners of John's mouth, along the molars, up behind in the moist tight space between lip and front teeth, in the inside pockets of his cheeks. It's a tongue that wants to be kept up with. John can't just let it roam where it would. He has to fend it off, fence with it, lean into it.

His ears are hot with the effort of it.

Sherlock's tongue, in the secret world of their joined mouths, darts into John's mouth and then retreats, makes another foray and recoils. John's tongue follows it into the depths of Sherlock's mouth, runs after it along molars and canines, slips out and across Sherlock's lips, and suddenly, one of Sherlock's hands unclasps and grips John's left forearm.

John gasps and breaks the kiss.

They sit still, rod-still.

John breathes hard and stares at the tablecloth.

He can't tell where Sherlock is looking.

Sherlock's hand is hot and hard around his forearm. Sherlock's thigh is hot and hard under his right hand.

John licks his lips. They taste of Sherlock.

"Right," he says and snatches up his head.

Sherlock's pupils are big and black. Hair falls across his forehead and onto the tops of his eyebrows.

"Yes, well," says John. His hand on Sherlock's thigh has gone to sleep. He lifts it and stretches the fingers. He leaves behind a damp patch on Sherlock's trousers.

All of a sudden, like sun behind clouds, a broad and bright smile flashes across Sherlock's face.

John's mouth smiles in echo.

"You're good," says Sherlock. "You're good at this."

"I am," says John. "I mean: I am?" He laughs. It's all built up, and now it all bursts out. He stares at Sherlock's flushed lips.

Sherlock sucks in his lips, as if to savour John's taste on them.

John's gaze flickers down to Sherlock's crotch, he can't help checking.

Sherlock notices and his smile becomes yet broader.

"Now what?" Sherlock says.

"That's. That's what I was going to..."

"But you know? Right?"

"Well," says John.

It's true. He does know. He sits straight and smiles, and then he grabs one of the roses from its vase, stem dripping, slips it between his teeth and bites down on thorns.

Sherlock's eyebrows lift up like lark's wings.

John spits blood and presents the rose to Sherlock. "Of course I know what to do next," he says. "It's not rocket science."

"It's not?"

"No," says John. "It's elementary, my dear Sherlock. Quite elementary."

THE END.

\----

All original bits © Lobelia321

Written and posted on 27 December 2011, in the very very small hours.

http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/754456.html

A03: http://archiveofourown.org/works/304360


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